My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged
Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in
full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles
winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away
into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and
dies;
Where but to think is
to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at
them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all
her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous
glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets
cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of
flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring
forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in
vain -
To thy high requiem
become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for
home,
She stood in tears amid
the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in
faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and
now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: -
Do I wake or sleep?
Painter,
Benjamin Haydon, was a friend of Keats, who was instrumental in Keats'
meeting William Wordsworth. Haydon arranged the meeting and later described
it thusly:
"I said he [Keats] has just finished an exquisite ode to Pan - and as he had not a copy I begged Keats to repeat it - which he did in his usual half chant, (most touching) walking up & down the room - when he had done I felt really, as if I had heard a young Apollo -
Wordsworth drily said -
'a Very pretty piece of Paganism' -
This was unfeeling, & unworthy of his high Genius to a young Worshipper like Keats - & Keats felt it deeply - so that if Keats has said any thing severe about our Friend; it was because he was wounded - and though he dined with Wordsworth after at my table - he never forgave him."
Haydon's
account is often doubted since he never said anything of the sort at any time
soon after the meeting, and did not tell the story until decades
after.
On the
other hand, Keats had this to say in a letter to his brothers:
"Wordsworth
has left a bad impression where ever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity,
and bigotry."
